1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an extruder nozzle for extruding semi-fluid products, and more particularly to a heated extruded nozzle for facilitating the extrusion of such products.
2. Description of the Prior Art
A wide variety of products, such as foods, building materials, explosives and products made from rubber are commonly formed from a semi-fluid material. With respect to food products, it has become desirable, both in the home as well as in restaurants, to utilize food portioned in predetermined serving sizes. For example, it has become desirable to provide serving portions of sausage in sausage links.
In co-pending application Ser. No. 610,301, filed Sept. 4, 1975, now U.S. Pat. No. 4,124,339, an apparatus is provided for producing discrete products from semi-fluid material. In one application of the process disclosed in that application, the still warm pre-rigor pork is boned, ground and blended and then pumped to a plurality of extruder nozzles. The output of the nozzles is carried by way of a moving conveyor through a chilling station where the extruded sausage is cut and packaged into discrete product links.
As can be appreciated from the disclosure in this co-pending application, the extruded sausage is skinless, thereby eliminating the requirement of stuffing comminuted sausage into a casing. While extruding skinless sausage in the manner described in the co-pending application eliminates much of the expense involved in forming sausage with an outer casing, unless the sausage is extruded at precisely controlled temperatures and conditions, resulting friction between the extruder tubes and the comminuted meat causes fat to come to the surface of the sausage, thereby producing a product which appears to consist of all or excessive fat. This result is of course unpleasing to the customer and therefore unacceptable.
A need has thus developed for a system to eliminate the problems heretofore encountered in extruding comminuted meats having any fat content or any semi-fluid products which must be extruded through tubes where the extrusion is made difficult because of friction between the interior walls of the tube and the meat products.